The gates of sleep fell a-trembling
Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter _yes_,
Shaken with happiness:
The gates of sleep stood wide.

* * * * *

"Oh, what if a sound should be made!
Oh, what if a bound should be laid
To this bow-and-string tension of beauty and silence a-spring,--
To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold of silence the string!
I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diaphanous gleam
Will break as a bubble o'erblown in a dream,--
Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space and of night,
Overweighted with stars, overfreighted with light,
Oversated with beauty and silence, will seem
But a bubble that broke in a dream,
If a bound of degree to this grace be laid,
Or a sound or a motion made."

Throughout his artistic life Lanier was true to the loftiest ideals. He
did not separate artistic from moral beauty. To his sensitive spirit, the
beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty seemed interchangeable
terms. He did not make the shallow cry of "art for art's sake" a pretext
or excuse for moral taint. On the contrary, he maintained that all art
should be the embodiment of truth, goodness, love. "Can not one say with
authority," he inquires in one of his university lectures, "to the young
artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-
forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will
interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear